By JEFFREY COLLINS (Associated Press)
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Alex Murdaugh, now in a prison jumpsuit instead of a suit, went into a courtroom in South Carolina and was given a 40-year federal prison sentence.
This time, Murdaugh was punished in federal court for theft from clients and his law firm. The 55-year-old disbarred lawyer is already serving a life sentence without parole for killing his wife and son.
A report by federal agents suggested a prison term between 17 1/2 and just under 22 years.
The 40-year sentence is in addition to the life sentence. Murdaugh also pleaded guilty and was ordered to spend 27 years in prison for financial crime charges in state court. His federal sentence will run concurrently with his state prison term, and he may have to serve all 40 years if his murder convictions are overturned on appeal.
U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel stated that he gave Murdaugh a harsher punishment than recommended because he stole from “the most needy, vulnerable people” like a client who became a quadriplegic after a crash, a state trooper who was injured on the job, and a trust fund for children whose parents died in a wreck.
“They placed all their problems and all their hopes on Mr. Murdaugh and it is from those people he abused and stole. It is a difficult set of actions to understand,” Gergel said.
There are 22 federal counts which are the final charges for Murdaugh, who used to be an established lawyer negotiating multimillion-dollar settlements in Hampton County, where members of his family served as elected prosecutors and ran the premier law firm for nearly a century.
Murdaugh will also have to pay nearly $9 million in restitution.
Prosecutors seek a harsher sentence for Murdaugh because FBI agents believe he is not telling the whole truth about the $6 million he stole and whether an unnamed attorney assisted his criminal schemes.
Murdaugh’s biggest scheme involved the sons of his longtime housekeeper Gloria Satterfield. She died in a fall at the family home. Murdaugh promised to take care of Satterfield’s family, then conspired with a lawyer friend who pleaded guilty to stealing $4 million in a wrongful death settlement with the family’s insurer.
Altogether, Murdaugh took settlement money from or inflated fees or expenses for over two dozen clients. Prosecutors stated that the FBI found 11 more victims than the state investigation found, and that Murdaugh stole nearly $1.3 million from them.
At his sentencing on Monday, Murdaugh again apologized to his victims, expressing feelings of “guilt, sorrow, shame, embarrassment, humiliation.”
Similar to his state sentencing, Murdaugh offered to meet with his victims to hear what they want to say and to “more closely inspect my sincerity.”
“There’s not enough time and I don’t possess a sufficient vocabulary to adequately convey to you in words the magnitude of how I feel about the things I did,” Murdaugh said.
Murdaugh attributed almost twenty years of addiction to opioids to his crimes and stated he was proud that he has remained clean for 937 days.
Gergel mocked his attempt to blame drugs.
The judge stated that no truly impaired person could have executed these intricate transactions, involving a web of fake accounts, manipulated checks, and money moved from one place to another to conceal the thefts over the course of nearly two decades.
A year ago, Murdaugh was found guilty of using a shotgun to kill his younger son Paul and a rifle to kill his wife, Maggie. While he has admitted to numerous financial crimes, he vehemently denies murdering them and testified in his own defense. There will be many years of appeals in the murder cases.
The case has fascinated fans of true crime, resulting in numerous podcast episodes and thousands of posts on social media. It took some unexpected turns in the days leading up to Monday’s sentencing hearing.
Murdaugh's lawyers stated that an FBI agent who administered a polygraph test asked Murdaugh if he could keep a secret, and later revealed that he had just tested notorious Dutch killer Joran van der Sloot.
Prosecutors claim that Murdaugh failed the polygraph test. Each of the 22 charges that Murdaugh pleaded guilty to in federal court carried a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison, with some carrying a maximum of 30 years.
The defense argued that Murdaugh's alleged strange behavior and the unusual questions from an FBI agent led to his failure in the test.
Prosecutors are seeking to keep many of the FBI statements confidential, stating that they are still investigating the missing money and individuals who may have assisted Murdaugh in stealing it. They argue that making the information public would jeopardize an ongoing grand jury investigation.
